UK gains £20bn from European migrants, UCL economists reveal
UK gains £20bn from European migrants, UCL economists reveal
• Tax payments by European migrants far outweigh welfare • Arrivals are better educated than British workforce
Migrant workers tending to tomatoes at the Baarda Nursery near Hull. Photograph: Gary Calton for the Guardian
European migrants to the UK are not a drain on Britain’s finances
and pay out far more in taxes than they receive in state benefits, a new study has revealed.
The research by two leading migration economists at University
College also reveals that Britain is uniquely successful, even more than
Germany, in attracting the most highly skilled and highly educated
migrants in Europe.
The study, the Fiscal Impact of Immigration to the UK, published in
the Economic Journal, reveals that more than 60% of new migrants from
western and southern Europe are now university graduates. The
educational levels of east Europeans who come to Britain are also
improving with 25% of recent arrivals having completed a degree compared
with 24% of the UK-born workforce.
It says that European migrants made a net contribution of £20bn to UK
public finances between 2000 and 2011. Those from the original 15 EU
countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, contributed 64% –
£15bn more in taxes than they received in welfare – while east European
migrants contributed 12%, equivalent to £5bn more.
The research by UCL’s centre for research and analysis of migration
was undertaken to “fill the void” in the debate on immigration in which
the contribution of unrestricted migration from within the EU has become
the centre of intense political and public concern.
Prof Christian Dustmann, co-author of the study and director of the
centre, said: “A key concern of the public debate on migration is
whether immigrants contribute their fair share to the tax and welfare
systems. Our new analysis draws a positive picture of the overall fiscal
contribution made by recent immigrant cohorts, particularly of
immigrants arriving from the EU.”
He said that the educational qualifications of new migrants to
Britain, especially from western and southern Europe, was now
extraordinarily high and higher than any other EU country. He said the
UK would have had to spend £6.8bn on education to build up the same
level of “human capital”. The study shows that not only are European
migrants more highly educated than the UK-born workforce but they are
less likely to be in receipt of state benefits – 43% less likely among
migrants in the past decade – and more likely to be in employment. They
are 7% less likely to live in social housing.
The report was criticised as being “shallow” by David Green of the
centre-right thinktank, Civitas. He said that by focusing on taxes and
benefits, the report had missed out some vital costs.
“People who migrate tend to be young, better educated and energetic.
They make good employees here but they are a loss to their own country.
If other European countries fail to prosper because their brightest and
best have travelled to the UK, we are all worse off,” he said.
Green added that the survey also disregarded the waste of human
capital involved in too many university migrants working as baristas or
waiters.
The Conservative immigration minister James Brokenshire, responding
to the UCL report, said: “Since 2010, we have reformed benefits,
healthcare and housing rules to make them among the tightest in Europe
and we continue to see an increase in the number of British citizens in
work. In the past, the majority of growth in employment was taken up by
foreign nationals; in the last year, three-quarters of it was accounted
for by UK nationals.
“We are creating a system that is fair to British citizens and those
who want to come here legitimately and contribute to our national life,
but which is tough on those who flout the rules.”
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